Doug McIntyre: Never a stranger under his dad's roof

The house is both mysterious and familiar. Large, sunny, and impressively on the water along the eastern shore of Maryland - it's a comfortable place to spend a weekend in mid-June or any other time.

I've been here before, but not often enough to know it well. Ocean Pines is a continent removed from my San Fernando Valley life, so trips here are rare.

Too rare.

Today is Father's Day and this is my father's house. This is wholly his house, a house he designed and built from scratch. A house built long after my brother, sister and I were out on our own. It was a house built without children in mind. It's a house in which I have been a guest, but never a resident. Still, while I might be under a strange roof, I've never been a stranger under this roof.

It's not the lamps, tables and chairs that make this house familiar. It's the intangibles, tiny and unnoticed by casual friends and visitors, but they jump out to me: the scent of pipe tobacco - always Half & Half - the ever-present pile of books, the little metal soccer trophy from sixty-something years ago, knickknacks that would be invisible to an outsider's eye are beacons of recognition to me, evidence of a shared history.

This is my father's house on Father's Day.

I might fumble around at night searching for the

light switch and wonder where he keeps the trash bags and in which cabinet the dinner plates go, but I still feel at home.

Home is where you're welcomed. Home is where you're loved.

A clock chimes somewhere downstairs, in what room I know not. I don't remember ever hearing a clock like that in the house I grew up in. This is a new sound. The familiar sounds are the drone of a golf telecast on the television, my dad's catch phrases, "Holy Hanna" after a missed or made putt, and occasionally one of his window-rattling sneezes.

Like millions of American families, mine is scattered across the land. With me tucked away in the West, the rest run up and down the Atlantic from Raleigh to Putnam County, N.Y. Life keeps us busy and reunions are rare. The months fly past, as do the years. Father's Day usually means a phone call and a card, so this year is extra special. This one I'll make a point of remembering.

My father turns 80 in December. I'm lucky to still have him. I'm lucky to have this strange house in Maryland to call home.

Doug McIntyre appears in the Los Angeles Daily News on Sundays and Wednesdays. You can reach him at dncolumnist@dailynews.com.

Source: http://www.dailynews.com/columnists/ci_18308897?source=rss

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